---
layout: docs
page_title: Upcoming
description: >-
  Review upcoming HashiCorp Nomad release changes.
---

# Upcoming

Nomad strives to be backward compatible for at least 2 major releases, so for
example, you can upgrade Nomad v1.6.x to Nomad v1.8.x. In addition, Enterprise
customers have access to [Long Term Support (LTS)][LTS] releases.

Refer to [Upgrading][] for details of the upgrade process, and [Upgrade
Guides][] for notes on upgrading specific versions.

However, from time to time it's necessary to make backwards _incompatible_
changes to Nomad. We announce these on [changelog][], the [Release Notes][], and
the version-specific [Upgrade Guides][]. In order to help you plan your
upgrades, this page maintains a list of all planned future changes that might
cause backwards incompatibilities or require operational changes. It's possible
that a given change may happen later than intended, at which point we update
this document. However, we do not move changes earlier than originally published
unless there's a required change due to a security vulnerability.

## Nomad 1.9.0

* Nomad will remove support for HCL1 job specifications and the `-hcl1` flag on
  the `nomad job run` and other commands. Refer to [GH-20195][] for more details.
* Nomad will remove the [`tls_prefer_server_cipher_suites`][] agent configuration.
* Nomad will remove support for Nomad client agents older than 1.6.0. Older
  nodes will fail heartbeats. Nomad servers will mark the workloads on those
  nodes as lost and reschedule them normally according to the job's
  [`reschedule`][] block.

## Nomad 1.10.0 LTS

Nomad 1.10.0 is a Long-Term Support release for Enterprise customers.

* Nomad will remove support for the legacy token workflow for Consul. Workloads
  that need Consul support will require the cluster be configured to use
  Workload Identity with Consul. Refer to [the integration
  guide][consul-integration] for details.
* Nomad will remove support for the legacy token workflow for Vault. Workloads
  that need Vault support will require the cluster be configured to use Workload
  Identity with Vault. Refer to [the integration guide][vault-integration] for
  details.
* Nomad will no longer create an implicit `consul` block for workloads that
  don't register services with Consul. Jobs that require Consul tokens for
  `template` rendering will be required to provide a `consul` block.
* Nomad clients will no longer execute all binaries in the plugin directory on
  startup for fingerprinting. Only plugins with an associated `plugin` block in
  the Nomad agent configuration will be fingerprinted. Refer to [GH-18529][] for
  more details.
* Nomad will ignore the deprecated `stop_after_client_disconnect`,
  `max_client_disconnect`, and `prevent_reschedule_on_lost` fields and only
  support the [`disconnect`][] block, which covers the same functionality.

[LTS]: /nomad/docs/enterprise#long-term-support-lts-releases
[Upgrading]: /nomad/docs/upgrade
[Upgrade Guides]: /nomad/docs/upgrade/upgrade-specific
[changelog]: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
[Release Notes]: /nomad/docs/release-notes
[GH-20195]: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/20195
[`tls_prefer_server_cipher_suites`]: /nomad/docs/configuration/tls#tls_prefer_server_cipher_suites
[consul-integration]: /nomad/docs/secure/acl/consul
[vault-integration]: /nomad/docs/secure/vault/acl
[GH-18529]: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/18529
[`disconnect`]: /nomad/docs/job-specification/disconnect
[`reschedule`]: /nomad/docs/job-specification/reschedule
